Edge of Tomorrow (****)
Directed by: Doug Liman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton,
Brendan Gleeson
Seen: June 13th 2014
**** Out of ****
Tom Cruise is currently the king of Hollywood.
Regardless of what you may think of him in a personal capacity, he is a
phenomenal actor and a major star, and his movies rarely fail to entertain.
Edge of Tomorrow is one of the most thoroughly entertaining movies I’ve seen in
a very long time, with visual spectacle, visceral action, and even some humour
and the potential of romance lingering in a smile. While Tom Cruise rules the
roost, Emily Blunt doesn’t hold back, providing a great companion to Cruise as
his mentor when he discovers he is reliving the same day, the same battle, over
and over again.
With Europe overrun by Mimics, as humans have dubbed
them, an alien race bent on exterminating humanity, the United Defence Forces
rally in London, behind General Brigham (Gleeson). American Major William Cage
(Cruise) keeps himself out of the fight by being the media face of the UDF, but
General Brigham orders him to the front lines. Cage tries to avoid this but is
arrested and incapacitated. He wakes up on a runway at the forward operations
base at Heathrow Airport, handcuffed. He is accompanied to his new barracks by
the plucky Master Sergeant Farell (Paxton), where he is introduced to his team,
J Squad. Cage goes through an afternoon of basic training before being deployed
to battle just across the English (or is it French?) channel. The UDF attack is
severely ambushed by the Mimics, and Cage is attacked and killed by an Alpha
Mimic. Cage however manages to detonate a claymore before being killed, and the
Alpha bleeds over Cage as he dies. A moment later, Cage wakes up on the runway
again, and after figuring out what’s happening to him he survives a bit longer
each time. He meets the UDF’s public face, the almost super-soldier Sergeant
Rita Vrataski (Blunt) when he saves her life – and she realises what is going
on when he shows an uncanny ability to predict events. Just before being blown
up, she tells him: “Come find me when you wake up”.
He does, and she trains him through multiple days,
each day ending with their death and Cage resetting to the runway. His
capabilities grow, and he manages to get ever closer to helping humanity win,
but still the Mimics seem to always be ready for him, regardless of what he
does or where he goes. Scenes are replayed multiple times, but never in a way
that makes the viewer start wondering whether the story is headed nowhere. Each
time small deviations come into play just after the scene is set and the
earlier memory retrieved for both Cage and the viewer, and each time it’s
thrilling to see how things change and pan out. Together Cage and Vrataski must
figure out a way to beat the Mimics, and if they do not do it here, the UDF
loses an enormous amount of troops - and potentially earth - for almost
nothing.
Edge of Tomorrow is visually stunning, from the
regular Mimics to the much more menacing Alpha, to the robotic exoskeletons the
humans wear into battle, to the landscapes of death and destruction and also
including everything in between. Doug Liman, who rose to fame after directing
The Bourne Identity, has crafted a cracking military science-fiction thriller,
and directs Cruise and Blunt through stupendously entertaining and complex
battle scenes to a truly thrilling climax of alien versus human. I will own
Edge of Tomorrow as soon as possible; I simply have to watch it again and
again.
Comments